I found myself in a social media debate with a Muslim woman as the violence in Israel was leading to violent attacks against Jews all over the world last May. Her solution? “Jews should just go back to Poland,” she explained. “Go back to Eastern Europe, where you belong.” I told her that we are not indigenous to those places, we were merely expelled to them, and the last time we were there in large numbers, millions of our people were gassed and thrown into ovens. The more that violence against Jews increases around the world, the more it’s painstakingly clear that we must have a homeland to return to.
A commenter asked, “It’s been 2,000 years. Are you still not over that?”
“No,” I told him, ”We are not.”
What I realized is that all of these challenges are just what we need. We need to be told that we should die, move to Poland and give up our land. We need to take these awful suggestions and use them to create enough fire in our bellies in order for us to do the exact opposite. Picking up a life and moving thousands of miles to another country is not an easy thing to do. Seventy-four years after we established the Jewish state, and less than half of us are there. Let’s channel those wishes for our death and destruction and do what we do best: Am Yisrael Chai!
